Jim Morrison woke, with the help of the light beside his bed at three in the afternoon.
Short days, he'd been up writing poetry, drinking some nice simple low level French red,
now that he wasn't doing acid anymore. No more the Lizard King, no more the drinker of hard stuff,
Fuck that, thought Jim Morrison, that was all bad shit,
only a young idiot would do. L.A.
and still when he woke up sometimes, even while behaving,
something about the decreased ability to breath through his nose,
an unready attempt at mouth wash, or a pill,
and then Jim is starting the day with some attempt of the body
to vomit. And so he puked a bit, in the sink, after peeing,
but not really puking. It was still puking,
but I don't know, just an attempt at morning balance,
like taking a shit. Just that, fortunately, it hardly happened everyday.
Okay, he said to himself.
The lamb chops in the fridge he'd overcooked, the green tea was good,
touch up the beard underneath the neck, in the shower, and then, more or less,
ready to get on the bike, finding some gluten free bread, placing it into
a small cubicle Rubbermaid. Left one of those plastic sleeves of sliced turkey in the cooler.
Vitamins, Jim Morrison said, to himself.
Christmastime now. How about that.
Now just get to work, and find out how they were going to fuck with you that night.
I am the Lizard King.
I can do anything.
Monday, December 18, 2017
Sunday, December 17, 2017
scribbled sketches from the last weeks
After five shifts, it is harder to get started. The neck is sore. Requiring yoga. Two jazz nights, a busy saturday, a long sunday, wine tasting. Well, there's nothing to write, simply no energy.
The quietness of the blank page
The author has difficulty finding employment. If he were employable in the standard way he would not be an author. The prevailing monopoly culture has decreased the value of his work to the point of economic worthlessness. Why put more work into it, when it is already worthless, no prospect of compensation...
After the workweek, completely sluggish. The monkish life. The yoga to look forward to, a meditation to fend off the coming holidays.
Relax, relax. It's just that the words are coming very slowly today. Hard to break through.
A nice lady, a regular, tells me, quietly, as she leaves with her two church friends... "you're not as happy as you used to be..."
Yeah, deep down, she is right.
An author in the flesh... That's the important thing. It's no longer whether you are even recognized at all anymore, but just that you live the life, as best you can.
The quietness of the blank page
The author has difficulty finding employment. If he were employable in the standard way he would not be an author. The prevailing monopoly culture has decreased the value of his work to the point of economic worthlessness. Why put more work into it, when it is already worthless, no prospect of compensation...
After the workweek, completely sluggish. The monkish life. The yoga to look forward to, a meditation to fend off the coming holidays.
Relax, relax. It's just that the words are coming very slowly today. Hard to break through.
A nice lady, a regular, tells me, quietly, as she leaves with her two church friends... "you're not as happy as you used to be..."
Yeah, deep down, she is right.
An author in the flesh... That's the important thing. It's no longer whether you are even recognized at all anymore, but just that you live the life, as best you can.
Adam & Eve
And after all that, after such a week, even after three nights not having to work, and lots of sleep, and lots of nutritional intake, finally, at about 5 AM, on the eve going back to the bar in twelve hours to start all over again, I have some time to capture a few thoughts and dream-like profundities. Poetic thoughts that make no sense in the lens of studied rational opinion.
I've edited a bit, flapped some paint on a canvas earlier, but there is stuff to do. I dreamed of the woods I grew up by, upstream from the old house. I remember the paths of deer up the sides of hills through brush. I had other dreams I barely remember. I began to slowly feel better, sometimes resting like a curled up infant, as if recalling the original sphere we come from, tiny legs curled up beneath us, hands near our mouths, thinking, listening, planning, absorbing the changes of growing, of suddenly being alive, having consciousness...
I've gone to bed after watching Ancient Aliens, letting the earliest of crafts sink in... Cave paintings, the sacredness of geology, the earth's energy, the inherent ability of the human being.
Sex scandals... imbalance of power. Male and female are created equal, aboriginally, in the image of the creator. Harassment speaks of abuse, of inequality, of power imposed upon those with less power, of the strong male over the weak female... How did it all happen? How did some achieve the power such that they could and would wield it over the less powerful? What was introduced into human society that allowed for such things? What happened that came on top of the traditional attribution of wisdom, skill, intelligence, respect for age, work, each to one's own ability that allowed the original fairness of society, such that there was fairness, no sexual harassment....
That Eve exercises free will, as much, or more so, than Adam, in her estimation of the tree in the garden and its fruit, gives us an interesting lesson of equality, often overlooked in the reading of the story as a tale of good and evil, temptation, odd behavior that leads to unhappy self-consciousness, sudden guilt... The self-consciousness of sin is somehow tied to the equality of male and female aspects of the human being. Does the shame come from Adam finding himself more important, more the subject of God's disapproval than his counterpart...
And what does one feel, naturally, with regard for the other sex? Naturally? Naturally, I would think, or at least entertain the thought thereof, that the main main main thing to strive for is that fundamental organic equality. An emotional equality to the investment... an equality of vulnerability, that beautiful quality of the human being that God gives to that original couple in the garden, who trade back and forth vulnerability and strength, confidence and doubt, calmness and guilt.. That is the male and female coupling, that interplay, that teasing, that back and forth, that exchange of happy things and sad things, the atomic coupling of positive and negative essential to the human reality.
And even then, even when you find that, even then, even with the achievement of that perfect balance, that which makes a deep smile come upon one's heart, even then, in this world, in this real world effected by so many things shoveled on top of the natural conditions of the aboriginal human being, male and female, things can go very badly, circumstances from the outside ripping through that garden.
And now, one really has to wonder, do the circumstances of this world allow for the equal couple to find a life together...
This time I write with, it's been hard to find, hard to support, not easy to find, not easy to pay for, not easy to have confidence in... But on the other side of that equation, there is faith. And faith is the center of the relationship, male and female To express one's thoughts, one's desires, one's observations, one's recipes for happiness and fullness, that is what one is supposed to do in this world, whatever the reward might be directly....
"Everybody feels yucky this time of year," my mom says, as I call her, checking in, as we go through presents, travel, work, snow in the north, coordination the many elements of holiday complication. And I feel it, the shortness of days, the cold spell that has made things a bit extra hard for those of us who do not have cars. I feel it when the kid bugs me after I've busted my butt through four very hard shifts to pick up his Saturday night. Got things to do.
A bug got into my old MacBook Pro, causing strange pop-up ads for antivirus protection, to make on-line shopping difficult. I resorted to shopping online through my iPhone, and finally made enough headway to feel a bit of calm about such responsibilities.
I get a bike ride in, late, indoors. The night before, I cook, slightly overcooked, a small rack of lamb. I go out to grocery shop, but get out too late for the little market, Glen's. The day before, a flu shot. Several of us are not putting up Christmas Trees in this year of Trump or whatever it is that is making misery. I bring an order of Chinese back to the lair, a bottle of inexpensive Beaujolais.
Soon the truck will rumble westward over the hollows of the street below, and above, the planes will lift off, reverse 9/11 speed up into the sky, loud enough to disturb one falling off to sleep...
Bushcraft Build-Off eases the nerves... The anxiety of scheduled time...
The difficulty of living, of housekeeping alone, of ease and eating, all that goes back to the original garden, along with that hanging of time, that fear of something other, so worthily expressed by primitive humanity by that garden myth... The fear of being expelled by the higher power... (That very lmyth that slowed up the works when I was trying to be a good college student...) And still, like the babe in the womb, we are living in that original garden myth, and we too must resort to poetry, to the hymns that go in accordance with that myth...
All around the world we will always feel that, real estate versus or rather inclusive of, and a facilitation of, that original instinct to pitch a tent in which to put all our hunter gatherer stuff...
Who is guilty, who is innocent, in this original myth that is set down at the bedrock of the mythology of the aboriginal taken to the gift of written language... What myth better addresses our everyday existence, our fear of having to leave what is home to go to work, to places fraught with conditions of unpredictability, such as allow for economic viability, the exchange of services...
I've edited a bit, flapped some paint on a canvas earlier, but there is stuff to do. I dreamed of the woods I grew up by, upstream from the old house. I remember the paths of deer up the sides of hills through brush. I had other dreams I barely remember. I began to slowly feel better, sometimes resting like a curled up infant, as if recalling the original sphere we come from, tiny legs curled up beneath us, hands near our mouths, thinking, listening, planning, absorbing the changes of growing, of suddenly being alive, having consciousness...
I've gone to bed after watching Ancient Aliens, letting the earliest of crafts sink in... Cave paintings, the sacredness of geology, the earth's energy, the inherent ability of the human being.
Sex scandals... imbalance of power. Male and female are created equal, aboriginally, in the image of the creator. Harassment speaks of abuse, of inequality, of power imposed upon those with less power, of the strong male over the weak female... How did it all happen? How did some achieve the power such that they could and would wield it over the less powerful? What was introduced into human society that allowed for such things? What happened that came on top of the traditional attribution of wisdom, skill, intelligence, respect for age, work, each to one's own ability that allowed the original fairness of society, such that there was fairness, no sexual harassment....
That Eve exercises free will, as much, or more so, than Adam, in her estimation of the tree in the garden and its fruit, gives us an interesting lesson of equality, often overlooked in the reading of the story as a tale of good and evil, temptation, odd behavior that leads to unhappy self-consciousness, sudden guilt... The self-consciousness of sin is somehow tied to the equality of male and female aspects of the human being. Does the shame come from Adam finding himself more important, more the subject of God's disapproval than his counterpart...
And what does one feel, naturally, with regard for the other sex? Naturally? Naturally, I would think, or at least entertain the thought thereof, that the main main main thing to strive for is that fundamental organic equality. An emotional equality to the investment... an equality of vulnerability, that beautiful quality of the human being that God gives to that original couple in the garden, who trade back and forth vulnerability and strength, confidence and doubt, calmness and guilt.. That is the male and female coupling, that interplay, that teasing, that back and forth, that exchange of happy things and sad things, the atomic coupling of positive and negative essential to the human reality.
And even then, even when you find that, even then, even with the achievement of that perfect balance, that which makes a deep smile come upon one's heart, even then, in this world, in this real world effected by so many things shoveled on top of the natural conditions of the aboriginal human being, male and female, things can go very badly, circumstances from the outside ripping through that garden.
And now, one really has to wonder, do the circumstances of this world allow for the equal couple to find a life together...
This time I write with, it's been hard to find, hard to support, not easy to find, not easy to pay for, not easy to have confidence in... But on the other side of that equation, there is faith. And faith is the center of the relationship, male and female To express one's thoughts, one's desires, one's observations, one's recipes for happiness and fullness, that is what one is supposed to do in this world, whatever the reward might be directly....
"Everybody feels yucky this time of year," my mom says, as I call her, checking in, as we go through presents, travel, work, snow in the north, coordination the many elements of holiday complication. And I feel it, the shortness of days, the cold spell that has made things a bit extra hard for those of us who do not have cars. I feel it when the kid bugs me after I've busted my butt through four very hard shifts to pick up his Saturday night. Got things to do.
A bug got into my old MacBook Pro, causing strange pop-up ads for antivirus protection, to make on-line shopping difficult. I resorted to shopping online through my iPhone, and finally made enough headway to feel a bit of calm about such responsibilities.
I get a bike ride in, late, indoors. The night before, I cook, slightly overcooked, a small rack of lamb. I go out to grocery shop, but get out too late for the little market, Glen's. The day before, a flu shot. Several of us are not putting up Christmas Trees in this year of Trump or whatever it is that is making misery. I bring an order of Chinese back to the lair, a bottle of inexpensive Beaujolais.
Soon the truck will rumble westward over the hollows of the street below, and above, the planes will lift off, reverse 9/11 speed up into the sky, loud enough to disturb one falling off to sleep...
Bushcraft Build-Off eases the nerves... The anxiety of scheduled time...
The difficulty of living, of housekeeping alone, of ease and eating, all that goes back to the original garden, along with that hanging of time, that fear of something other, so worthily expressed by primitive humanity by that garden myth... The fear of being expelled by the higher power... (That very lmyth that slowed up the works when I was trying to be a good college student...) And still, like the babe in the womb, we are living in that original garden myth, and we too must resort to poetry, to the hymns that go in accordance with that myth...
All around the world we will always feel that, real estate versus or rather inclusive of, and a facilitation of, that original instinct to pitch a tent in which to put all our hunter gatherer stuff...
Who is guilty, who is innocent, in this original myth that is set down at the bedrock of the mythology of the aboriginal taken to the gift of written language... What myth better addresses our everyday existence, our fear of having to leave what is home to go to work, to places fraught with conditions of unpredictability, such as allow for economic viability, the exchange of services...
Thursday, December 14, 2017
fictional sketches from the dying gaul restaurant & bar
Sunday, very very busy. I see immediately that we are short staffed. I do my best to get ready. Three parties of two at the bar come in, one two three, all of them regulars. Two ladies, also regulars, at the high tables, and then at 6:30, a five top, two four tops, and my brother and his wife coming. That's when I'm sent some help, in form of a waiter who never works upstairs who offers no help setting up. S. cannot see very well out of one eye, has had various accidents, a good hearted fellow, struggles to find things like spoons and check presenters in the dark. He stops and thinks in the middle of the battle, unfamiliar with the procedure of stacking up the dirty plates in imperfect fashion for the busboy to bring them back down to the kitchen later, so that I have to restrain myself from yelling at him, just put them down, anywhere is fine, referring to the milk crates below the liquor well. He doesn't get the routine, fumbles with bread and butter. The two servers downstairs are busy. The walkie talkie telling us to pick up plates of food from the kitchen is ringing off the hook. Server A wants server S to come back downstairs, but it is very busy up here too.
The busser comes up toward the end of the night, throws a huge pile of dirty dishes and silverware in the heavy plastic grey bus tub, and heads back to the kitchen. On top of everything, there is a pending visit from a veteran server, the bar guy everyone knows and asks about, the guy who went off to Brazil to World Cup, travelled South America, came back, had a shitty time in DC, moved to Denver, and still they always ask about him.
Monday, big party from the local university, coming in right at opening, prepped with all kinds of back-up, cases of wine, one white, an Alsace pinot blanc, one red, a Cotes du Rhone. Not many cocktails, but a quick response dance behind the bar. By seven thirty, the door having been open for two hours, it feels like it might be hours later. A group of fifty, pleasant, easy-going, local academics. Aloof. Eventually, two cases later, their requests slow to a trickle, and a regular comes in and sits down in the middle of them, while the dessert tarts, cut in small rectangles, sit out in trays.
Tuesday, a party of eighteen back in the wine room, tightly packed, at 7. My help arrives late, about 6. I do not envy at all what he has to deal with. I've scrambled to set-up, was there late, to get the wine lined up, plus on top of that, the wine tasting, a grenache gris from the Pays De L'Herault, a 2008, toward the end of it's wine life, and I think most of it will be headed to the kitchen for cooking. And again, at the end of the night, a lot of glassware, a shared busboy, and another big job of restocking.
The last night, a private party of 16 back in the room, with Chablis and Bordeaux to stock, and on top of that, jazz night with the most popular performers, IFC, World Bank kind of a crowd. Reservations include three at the bar, leaving four seats to play with.
At the beginning of that final night of the week, the party set-up for, the final countdown to the door opening. Tying the tie, brushing the teeth, fixing my collar, and as I come out of the restroom, at 5:27, there are people in the bar, six for drinks. My help, not in work clothes, goes back to the restroom or the office to change into work clothes, now at 5:30. I look around. I am tired. The party is two or three so far, now four. Okay, I guess it falls on me to actually wait on them, so I go over there, gentlemen, what can I get you. There are some familiar faces from the academic party. Okay, two pinot blanc, a belvedere and cranberry, a glass of red rhone. There are two ladies seated now at the bar, wanting to talk to me, neighborhood, regulars, odd. And then the party starts to show up at the bar. My other helper tonight comes, finally, goes back to the office to dress up, comes back behind the bar to eat some bread in the corner and talk with the busboy, and then she is looking at her cell phone, sending a text. The party of six, seated, is beginning to come up to the bar to ask for more drinks.
Finally, F, who is dressed now, engages. Are there specials, could someone get the specials? I ask. (The specials, specialties du chef are printed out on a piece of paper, soup du jour, two entrees, options of vegetable, counts of menu items that could well run-out, the dessert special.) Fire the appetizers, F announces to me, curtly. I look at him. He could do it as easily as I could. Okay... The six top is coming up to the bar to ask for drinks directly. They come up amidst the people showing up now for the big party. I have to ask a woman which party she is with. What table, F seems unclear. Table 54! I exclaim, raising my voice in irritation. F: "You don't have to be rude about it." Sorry... Yes, I shouldn't have yelled at the poor guy. But it has been a frustrating week. 5:30 is 5:30. Two out of four nights left to wonder who will be helping me out, and when, on obviously busy nights, doing set-up by myself, the other two nights either late the night before setting up, lining up the wine for big parties, and things in general, lots to do, lots to fret about.
A five top reservation winds up being a disorganized party of two. One a great friend of the chef, whose wine we are obliged to comp, even if she wants to be seated both at the bar and at a table. "We Love You," she sings out, to the musicians. I am, after all that, not in a chatty mood, the whole night. Particularly after not finding much help to begin with, my support staff milling about, wanting to chat.
At the end of the night, helper number 2, A. starts poking me... She helped me out Monday night. But she is obviously siding with the kid tonight. I am the bartender, after all. I should not necessarily expect any help to be on time to help me out right at 5:30 when the door opens. And then she gets psychological with me. T, if you're not happy with your life, it is your own responsibility to change it. Are you seeing a therapist still? What you get out of life is what you put into it. If you do not give love out, you will not receive any in return. Life is a mirror of what you give out... She continues to look at me out of the corner of her eye. I don't really need this at the end of the night. I find this all somehow insulting, particularly after the friendship and engagement I've given here at the old Gaul in the last fourteen years, opening the world of French wine to people young and old, which she has dismissed, quickly, in her little diatribe, as "giving out free drinks." And what am I left to do, but sort of nod politely. Okay, thank you. There is no way to win any argument with her and her made-up Russian mind, anyway. No point contradicting her, as she will counter with another observation, as she is hitting me now with them, one after another. Her mind is made up. I'm the bad guy, and this view she is spreading. You would be happier if you ate more carbs and sugar, she tells me. She shares chocolate dessert with the busboy.
There she is, eyeing me, as if she's not watching, but wanting to watch. I feel the presence of creepy, a spy, interrogating, to get information. Earlier, the other manager, a long standing friend in all this, has asked me if I want to participate in Secret Santa this year. I demure, explain that I, like Keith Richards, don't like to schedule anything before 3PM. Are you going to come to the staff holiday party? Again, there is the attempt to ascertain if there is loyalty on my part, necessary to my good terms with the rest of the front of the house staff, as well as go to any particular event. It feels like A. is party to the intelligence gathering.
There is something about it that takes no consideration into the artistic spirit, the whole sense of creativity and the spirit of entertainment as such. She watches me out of the corner of her eye, surreptitiously, as if wanting something out of me, as if I were to finally confess something, as if I were to break down, and I do not like this look, this studying of me. Before you accuse me, better look at your self... as the song says. "Russians are slaves," I remember my old friend Pani Korbonska telling me in confidence. Maybe I am sensitive, I don't know. Maybe I am bitter, from life experience. I don't know. But I don't think I've done anything terribly wrong here at work, in fact, a fair amount of good, though that is always tainted by the bullshit that will always happen in barrooms where people are freed up by the drink to talk a bit of bullshit, the bullshit that can not and should not be avoided.
Kerouac was a bit extra happy when he brought the scroll in to Bob Giroux, and Giroux and his office could not have helped but look at him like he was a bit of a madman, rejecting him and his crazy-looking manuscript, and then, seeing all this in his own eyes, Kerouac picked up the scroll (one would imagine), looked at them (one would imagine), and declared, "you have offended the holy spirit," and walked out.
At some point the boss comes by, asks me if everything was okay. I'd seen him talking to the kid earlier from a distance. It appears word has gotten around about my snapping. Who he listens to sometimes mystifies me, but he seems an even judge, so I do not worry too much. He has a good sense of workplace psychology, probably from his training in Switzerland. He approaches me later, as the night calms down, as the dust settles. "How you doing?" "Yeah, the last few nights have been hard." He listens, but there is an expression of some surprise, incredulous, as if no extra effort had been required, as if not big deal dealing with this particular mountains. "Busy is good," he replies. "Yeah." I don't expect much out of him. He's good when you go on a hike with him, but otherwise, do your job as a professional, fine. Yes, busy is good. It's not necessary at all for him to be there when the door opens, and he works hard enough, but sometimes I wish he was there. To see. Because then I think he could be a better judge about who is being professional and who is being less so. Gallic, he appears unable to acknowledge to me the intensity and the massive amount of energy, physical, social, intellectual, mental, to the doing of my job, to the commuting, to dealing with the shards of life left behind by the weekly effort...
I am tired. I find the movements of people not pleased with their seating on Jazz Night irritating, tiresome. I've worked pretty hard for four straight nights. Yes, the visit from old Jay back from Colorado, staying late to talk over a beer at the end of the first night of the workweek later than needed be, particularly after the frustration of help unaccustomed to the bar, did not help. Nor did the cold. When you're tired, talking with people at the bar, chitchat, particularly when the holidays are looming, is a bit hard.
I get back from it all, quite irritated and down. Who knows, maybe A is right. Maybe I really am unhappy, a kind of Scrooge...
Maybe she has a point.
The busser comes up toward the end of the night, throws a huge pile of dirty dishes and silverware in the heavy plastic grey bus tub, and heads back to the kitchen. On top of everything, there is a pending visit from a veteran server, the bar guy everyone knows and asks about, the guy who went off to Brazil to World Cup, travelled South America, came back, had a shitty time in DC, moved to Denver, and still they always ask about him.
Monday, big party from the local university, coming in right at opening, prepped with all kinds of back-up, cases of wine, one white, an Alsace pinot blanc, one red, a Cotes du Rhone. Not many cocktails, but a quick response dance behind the bar. By seven thirty, the door having been open for two hours, it feels like it might be hours later. A group of fifty, pleasant, easy-going, local academics. Aloof. Eventually, two cases later, their requests slow to a trickle, and a regular comes in and sits down in the middle of them, while the dessert tarts, cut in small rectangles, sit out in trays.
Tuesday, a party of eighteen back in the wine room, tightly packed, at 7. My help arrives late, about 6. I do not envy at all what he has to deal with. I've scrambled to set-up, was there late, to get the wine lined up, plus on top of that, the wine tasting, a grenache gris from the Pays De L'Herault, a 2008, toward the end of it's wine life, and I think most of it will be headed to the kitchen for cooking. And again, at the end of the night, a lot of glassware, a shared busboy, and another big job of restocking.
The last night, a private party of 16 back in the room, with Chablis and Bordeaux to stock, and on top of that, jazz night with the most popular performers, IFC, World Bank kind of a crowd. Reservations include three at the bar, leaving four seats to play with.
At the beginning of that final night of the week, the party set-up for, the final countdown to the door opening. Tying the tie, brushing the teeth, fixing my collar, and as I come out of the restroom, at 5:27, there are people in the bar, six for drinks. My help, not in work clothes, goes back to the restroom or the office to change into work clothes, now at 5:30. I look around. I am tired. The party is two or three so far, now four. Okay, I guess it falls on me to actually wait on them, so I go over there, gentlemen, what can I get you. There are some familiar faces from the academic party. Okay, two pinot blanc, a belvedere and cranberry, a glass of red rhone. There are two ladies seated now at the bar, wanting to talk to me, neighborhood, regulars, odd. And then the party starts to show up at the bar. My other helper tonight comes, finally, goes back to the office to dress up, comes back behind the bar to eat some bread in the corner and talk with the busboy, and then she is looking at her cell phone, sending a text. The party of six, seated, is beginning to come up to the bar to ask for more drinks.
Finally, F, who is dressed now, engages. Are there specials, could someone get the specials? I ask. (The specials, specialties du chef are printed out on a piece of paper, soup du jour, two entrees, options of vegetable, counts of menu items that could well run-out, the dessert special.) Fire the appetizers, F announces to me, curtly. I look at him. He could do it as easily as I could. Okay... The six top is coming up to the bar to ask for drinks directly. They come up amidst the people showing up now for the big party. I have to ask a woman which party she is with. What table, F seems unclear. Table 54! I exclaim, raising my voice in irritation. F: "You don't have to be rude about it." Sorry... Yes, I shouldn't have yelled at the poor guy. But it has been a frustrating week. 5:30 is 5:30. Two out of four nights left to wonder who will be helping me out, and when, on obviously busy nights, doing set-up by myself, the other two nights either late the night before setting up, lining up the wine for big parties, and things in general, lots to do, lots to fret about.
A five top reservation winds up being a disorganized party of two. One a great friend of the chef, whose wine we are obliged to comp, even if she wants to be seated both at the bar and at a table. "We Love You," she sings out, to the musicians. I am, after all that, not in a chatty mood, the whole night. Particularly after not finding much help to begin with, my support staff milling about, wanting to chat.
At the end of the night, helper number 2, A. starts poking me... She helped me out Monday night. But she is obviously siding with the kid tonight. I am the bartender, after all. I should not necessarily expect any help to be on time to help me out right at 5:30 when the door opens. And then she gets psychological with me. T, if you're not happy with your life, it is your own responsibility to change it. Are you seeing a therapist still? What you get out of life is what you put into it. If you do not give love out, you will not receive any in return. Life is a mirror of what you give out... She continues to look at me out of the corner of her eye. I don't really need this at the end of the night. I find this all somehow insulting, particularly after the friendship and engagement I've given here at the old Gaul in the last fourteen years, opening the world of French wine to people young and old, which she has dismissed, quickly, in her little diatribe, as "giving out free drinks." And what am I left to do, but sort of nod politely. Okay, thank you. There is no way to win any argument with her and her made-up Russian mind, anyway. No point contradicting her, as she will counter with another observation, as she is hitting me now with them, one after another. Her mind is made up. I'm the bad guy, and this view she is spreading. You would be happier if you ate more carbs and sugar, she tells me. She shares chocolate dessert with the busboy.
There she is, eyeing me, as if she's not watching, but wanting to watch. I feel the presence of creepy, a spy, interrogating, to get information. Earlier, the other manager, a long standing friend in all this, has asked me if I want to participate in Secret Santa this year. I demure, explain that I, like Keith Richards, don't like to schedule anything before 3PM. Are you going to come to the staff holiday party? Again, there is the attempt to ascertain if there is loyalty on my part, necessary to my good terms with the rest of the front of the house staff, as well as go to any particular event. It feels like A. is party to the intelligence gathering.
There is something about it that takes no consideration into the artistic spirit, the whole sense of creativity and the spirit of entertainment as such. She watches me out of the corner of her eye, surreptitiously, as if wanting something out of me, as if I were to finally confess something, as if I were to break down, and I do not like this look, this studying of me. Before you accuse me, better look at your self... as the song says. "Russians are slaves," I remember my old friend Pani Korbonska telling me in confidence. Maybe I am sensitive, I don't know. Maybe I am bitter, from life experience. I don't know. But I don't think I've done anything terribly wrong here at work, in fact, a fair amount of good, though that is always tainted by the bullshit that will always happen in barrooms where people are freed up by the drink to talk a bit of bullshit, the bullshit that can not and should not be avoided.
Kerouac was a bit extra happy when he brought the scroll in to Bob Giroux, and Giroux and his office could not have helped but look at him like he was a bit of a madman, rejecting him and his crazy-looking manuscript, and then, seeing all this in his own eyes, Kerouac picked up the scroll (one would imagine), looked at them (one would imagine), and declared, "you have offended the holy spirit," and walked out.
At some point the boss comes by, asks me if everything was okay. I'd seen him talking to the kid earlier from a distance. It appears word has gotten around about my snapping. Who he listens to sometimes mystifies me, but he seems an even judge, so I do not worry too much. He has a good sense of workplace psychology, probably from his training in Switzerland. He approaches me later, as the night calms down, as the dust settles. "How you doing?" "Yeah, the last few nights have been hard." He listens, but there is an expression of some surprise, incredulous, as if no extra effort had been required, as if not big deal dealing with this particular mountains. "Busy is good," he replies. "Yeah." I don't expect much out of him. He's good when you go on a hike with him, but otherwise, do your job as a professional, fine. Yes, busy is good. It's not necessary at all for him to be there when the door opens, and he works hard enough, but sometimes I wish he was there. To see. Because then I think he could be a better judge about who is being professional and who is being less so. Gallic, he appears unable to acknowledge to me the intensity and the massive amount of energy, physical, social, intellectual, mental, to the doing of my job, to the commuting, to dealing with the shards of life left behind by the weekly effort...
I am tired. I find the movements of people not pleased with their seating on Jazz Night irritating, tiresome. I've worked pretty hard for four straight nights. Yes, the visit from old Jay back from Colorado, staying late to talk over a beer at the end of the first night of the workweek later than needed be, particularly after the frustration of help unaccustomed to the bar, did not help. Nor did the cold. When you're tired, talking with people at the bar, chitchat, particularly when the holidays are looming, is a bit hard.
I get back from it all, quite irritated and down. Who knows, maybe A is right. Maybe I really am unhappy, a kind of Scrooge...
Maybe she has a point.
Monday, December 4, 2017
I guess it's just completely natural that an author and the barman would be one and the same. No one listens to either. Intelligence obscured. Too quiet to talk much. Too much the careful facilitator of language's flow, the curated conversation that allows the guest to say more than the server. Both allow the inner workings of the mind to remain secretive, behind the screen of a largely scripted exchange.
The great problem--particularly to the polite circles of a city's pecking order--is the natural super intelligence of the creature, the incredible capacity for skill in all things, really the very excesses of the abilities of the human being, and that this creature is stuck, just so, in the modern world that gives far more credit to the expediency of the machine than to all this native genius. Sad. Mired in politics on all levels.
Within the creature is the cave painter, The Beatles, the evolved monkey dog with a seal's personality and the dolphin's, who if left at a typewriter would indeed write all the great novels if you gave him long enough, indeed as if by sheer random mathematical rule. Stuck in the zoo of modern life, to be ogled and prodded.
Is mom's cell phone working? I've left three messages...
She seems to have misplaced it.
She needs it to travel. Try find your iPhone.
She doesn't know her apple password.
You can do it remotely. Her laptop is probably signed in...
Uh, remind me, is it under applications?
Go to apple.com. Look it up!
Mom: You should have joined a monastery six months ago...
The great problem--particularly to the polite circles of a city's pecking order--is the natural super intelligence of the creature, the incredible capacity for skill in all things, really the very excesses of the abilities of the human being, and that this creature is stuck, just so, in the modern world that gives far more credit to the expediency of the machine than to all this native genius. Sad. Mired in politics on all levels.
Within the creature is the cave painter, The Beatles, the evolved monkey dog with a seal's personality and the dolphin's, who if left at a typewriter would indeed write all the great novels if you gave him long enough, indeed as if by sheer random mathematical rule. Stuck in the zoo of modern life, to be ogled and prodded.
Is mom's cell phone working? I've left three messages...
She seems to have misplaced it.
She needs it to travel. Try find your iPhone.
She doesn't know her apple password.
You can do it remotely. Her laptop is probably signed in...
Uh, remind me, is it under applications?
Go to apple.com. Look it up!
Mom: You should have joined a monastery six months ago...
Sunday, December 3, 2017
Off to the kiddie birthday party. The week starts.
There is a fair amount of anguish getting ready for a Saturday night, in the world of barmen. Profound worries about getting set up. The guy the night before did such a job of restocking that I bring up a milk crate full of wine bottles, a six of soda water, two sixes of beer, a round of citrus fruit, and then come to find out he did nothing to set up the wines of the week, there on the top of the page of wines by the glass offered. This pisses you off. And then the kid you're working with is a no show until ten minutes before the door opens. Physical therapy, he explains. You could have let me know. The door opens, and boom, there are people, and the person with the phone is filling the tables with last minute reservations. An old girlfriend is expected to come by with her people, and you've just come from a kiddie birthday party, a fifth at a Mexican restaurant, upstairs, with balloons and such, and for the barman being around Georgetown parents and their kids is a bit like being around dinosaurs, foreign, and inexplicable. The parents handle it all with aplomb. And I gotta go to work soon enough, after I help family lug home the load of presents...
Visiting a kid in her own space, listening to them, you might begin to wonder, in terms of the pieces of your own psychological puzzle. Whereas you yourself have always prided yourself on being a nice guy, in your family's whole sometimes painful tradition of being gentle and kind, educators through and through, perhaps that very successful at the city and the professional world isn't all that sensitive, all that kind, all that generously open to the world of others. A charmer, sure, able to turn it on at will, when need be, but otherwise, not that very demonstrative when it comes to sustained generosity of spirit.
Well, as we all know, nice guys finish last. Right?
But then you begin to see that set-up, the dynamic. Pretty much working on you your whole life. The time he used your new leather gloves to wipe off the door sill of his new car at Christmastime, don't get any shit in here (that kind of stuff of wintertime up north, salt, road grit from the Mass Pike.) A looking after his needs, but not yours, the strategic put-down...
Of course you love him, in the deepest way possible. As a brother, of your parents flesh, with whom you've lived on, your whole life. The pioneer, the leader, the one kind to you enough, generously letting you tag along. The one able to get the neighbor girl to pull down her pants, the one who built the great tree houses, the dynamic one, the leader. Brotherly love is as deep as you get, coming out of the Big Bang. Jack and Bobby. No words need be spoken.
The stern Irish cop, well-humored enough, will come out, reminding one of his own most idiotic tendencies... He's right about you, in general, often enough, and you have your own deeper idiocy and states of poverty in affairs, and he could go at you much much worse, indeed, he is tolerant, turning the other cheek... But for the kindness little brother must have as a compensation to his head-strong rudeness to keep fellow humanity at bay. Big brother, the Mafia don, younger brother, the priest, gently taking care of aging mother.
Your own almost perverse kindness, the deferential humbling quality that colors personalities so fortunate to harbor such instincts.... Your own moral stance in life, God help you...
After he wrote, there in the sunlight on the back deck, laptop propped up so that he could write sitting on the old teak bench of his father's garden, he looked down at his bones, his fine wrists, light as air, covered with a gentle forest of golden hair. Tumeric water with lime, a can of soda water. The workweek had started. When his guts had straightened out from rising and hydrating, he would take the rest of his vitamins, and prepare to go to work. The anguish of starting the workweek, at least that was done and over. And he'd gotten up at a reasonable hour, more or less, out into the December daylight, the vital dose of nature, Vitamin D...
Well, Jesus, that explains a lot.
Once you start writing, which yes, is brave, people are right about that, insights come, first in flickers, in dumb animal movement toward a light. The first lines lead to insights, which lead to other insights, sometimes each deeper than the last.
And so he pondered, yes, this was why he was attracted to meanness, thought it normal, this was why he acted as if kindness from other people was a rare and seldom thing. This was why here at the flickerings of the prime of his life, supplemented by Chinese herbs and medications to keep the mood calm and positive, he was sprinkling a bit of cornstarch onto the pink rubbery artificial vagina of his Fleshlight to keep it "realistically flesh-like and supple," not tacking as old rubber gets. A dose of liquid Immodium to protect the first travels of the day. After the shower, returning to his thoughts.
Women do not have to be kind to you, not initially, but there are ways to read them. His instincts had always been good, but it was as if he were handicapped in some strange but crucial way, thus the ironies of his life, love life being far too ambitious a term, alas.
It would explain, he thought, as he zombie-like gathered himself for work, the checklist, making a sandwich of gluten free bread and roast beef from the Safeway, socks, a shirt, the tendency to insulate himself, by various means, from other people in general, or why he sometimes took to the wine bottle alone at the end of a shift, to calm the beastie... No wonder encounters with people in general made him nervous...
Yet, people told him, at work, that he had excellent people skills, that he should consider being an actor, and inside he would say, yes, I am an actor... many talents, but how to use them. Quisote and Hemingway's old man of the sea were figures of noble defeat, there was precedence in literature for that.
Where do the broken-hearted go--off to live out country songs and Hank Williams and the heartbreak that every Irishman knows is his inheritance...
Maybe he needed a puppy dog, or a prostitute. One of those lifelike sex-dolls made in Barcelona that cost thousands of dollars he'd come across through an article on Vice.com....
There is a fair amount of anguish getting ready for a Saturday night, in the world of barmen. Profound worries about getting set up. The guy the night before did such a job of restocking that I bring up a milk crate full of wine bottles, a six of soda water, two sixes of beer, a round of citrus fruit, and then come to find out he did nothing to set up the wines of the week, there on the top of the page of wines by the glass offered. This pisses you off. And then the kid you're working with is a no show until ten minutes before the door opens. Physical therapy, he explains. You could have let me know. The door opens, and boom, there are people, and the person with the phone is filling the tables with last minute reservations. An old girlfriend is expected to come by with her people, and you've just come from a kiddie birthday party, a fifth at a Mexican restaurant, upstairs, with balloons and such, and for the barman being around Georgetown parents and their kids is a bit like being around dinosaurs, foreign, and inexplicable. The parents handle it all with aplomb. And I gotta go to work soon enough, after I help family lug home the load of presents...
Visiting a kid in her own space, listening to them, you might begin to wonder, in terms of the pieces of your own psychological puzzle. Whereas you yourself have always prided yourself on being a nice guy, in your family's whole sometimes painful tradition of being gentle and kind, educators through and through, perhaps that very successful at the city and the professional world isn't all that sensitive, all that kind, all that generously open to the world of others. A charmer, sure, able to turn it on at will, when need be, but otherwise, not that very demonstrative when it comes to sustained generosity of spirit.
Well, as we all know, nice guys finish last. Right?
But then you begin to see that set-up, the dynamic. Pretty much working on you your whole life. The time he used your new leather gloves to wipe off the door sill of his new car at Christmastime, don't get any shit in here (that kind of stuff of wintertime up north, salt, road grit from the Mass Pike.) A looking after his needs, but not yours, the strategic put-down...
Of course you love him, in the deepest way possible. As a brother, of your parents flesh, with whom you've lived on, your whole life. The pioneer, the leader, the one kind to you enough, generously letting you tag along. The one able to get the neighbor girl to pull down her pants, the one who built the great tree houses, the dynamic one, the leader. Brotherly love is as deep as you get, coming out of the Big Bang. Jack and Bobby. No words need be spoken.
The stern Irish cop, well-humored enough, will come out, reminding one of his own most idiotic tendencies... He's right about you, in general, often enough, and you have your own deeper idiocy and states of poverty in affairs, and he could go at you much much worse, indeed, he is tolerant, turning the other cheek... But for the kindness little brother must have as a compensation to his head-strong rudeness to keep fellow humanity at bay. Big brother, the Mafia don, younger brother, the priest, gently taking care of aging mother.
Your own almost perverse kindness, the deferential humbling quality that colors personalities so fortunate to harbor such instincts.... Your own moral stance in life, God help you...
After he wrote, there in the sunlight on the back deck, laptop propped up so that he could write sitting on the old teak bench of his father's garden, he looked down at his bones, his fine wrists, light as air, covered with a gentle forest of golden hair. Tumeric water with lime, a can of soda water. The workweek had started. When his guts had straightened out from rising and hydrating, he would take the rest of his vitamins, and prepare to go to work. The anguish of starting the workweek, at least that was done and over. And he'd gotten up at a reasonable hour, more or less, out into the December daylight, the vital dose of nature, Vitamin D...
Well, Jesus, that explains a lot.
Once you start writing, which yes, is brave, people are right about that, insights come, first in flickers, in dumb animal movement toward a light. The first lines lead to insights, which lead to other insights, sometimes each deeper than the last.
And so he pondered, yes, this was why he was attracted to meanness, thought it normal, this was why he acted as if kindness from other people was a rare and seldom thing. This was why here at the flickerings of the prime of his life, supplemented by Chinese herbs and medications to keep the mood calm and positive, he was sprinkling a bit of cornstarch onto the pink rubbery artificial vagina of his Fleshlight to keep it "realistically flesh-like and supple," not tacking as old rubber gets. A dose of liquid Immodium to protect the first travels of the day. After the shower, returning to his thoughts.
Women do not have to be kind to you, not initially, but there are ways to read them. His instincts had always been good, but it was as if he were handicapped in some strange but crucial way, thus the ironies of his life, love life being far too ambitious a term, alas.
It would explain, he thought, as he zombie-like gathered himself for work, the checklist, making a sandwich of gluten free bread and roast beef from the Safeway, socks, a shirt, the tendency to insulate himself, by various means, from other people in general, or why he sometimes took to the wine bottle alone at the end of a shift, to calm the beastie... No wonder encounters with people in general made him nervous...
Yet, people told him, at work, that he had excellent people skills, that he should consider being an actor, and inside he would say, yes, I am an actor... many talents, but how to use them. Quisote and Hemingway's old man of the sea were figures of noble defeat, there was precedence in literature for that.
Where do the broken-hearted go--off to live out country songs and Hank Williams and the heartbreak that every Irishman knows is his inheritance...
Maybe he needed a puppy dog, or a prostitute. One of those lifelike sex-dolls made in Barcelona that cost thousands of dollars he'd come across through an article on Vice.com....
Friday, December 1, 2017
It was a bit like a traveling concession. People were mobile back then. A little spiritual talk, followed up by a little sustenance for the crowd. A lot of talk about fish, fishermen, bread, vineyard, fruit of the tree, grain... Jesus would give a talk, and then the loaves and the fishes, each in keeping with the other, each bringing the point of the other home.
The nearest approximation to him, a sort of barman. There were no fixed places for such, beyond the innkeeper of the Good Samaritan story, those kind of places. If a stable would do, any other place would do just fine too. And that''s perhaps why he sounds like a bartender about to retire, take this wine, it's my blood, believe me; take this bread, it is my body, believe me... I'm done. That's my last shift.
They weren't so scheduled back then to be tied down to shifts or to a particular establishment. Jesus, Sunday through Wednesday, 4:30 to close.
Somewhere along the line the job sort of got downgraded. Hey, could I get a martini, olives, please. The scholarly scholar's son got stuck behind a bar, less the doling out of miraculous wisdom, more the grunt work of trade, an employee, the boss's bottom line in mind, that's how it works. Even the strongest of unions will never bring that back, the job as it was in the original. And again, people, for all their claims of great mobility, are really more settled down than ever, stuck where they are, commuting in from the suburbs, bound to make anyone bitter and unimaginative, to say nothing of being needy and maybe even thirsty. Not like you're pulling up somewhere with your flock of sheep or your herd of swine. Too practical and humorless a world for that. Sheep and pigs come via the supermarket, as does whatever prophecy the world would allow these days, in form of The National Inquirer, or People, or laundry detergent.
The nearest approximation to him, a sort of barman. There were no fixed places for such, beyond the innkeeper of the Good Samaritan story, those kind of places. If a stable would do, any other place would do just fine too. And that''s perhaps why he sounds like a bartender about to retire, take this wine, it's my blood, believe me; take this bread, it is my body, believe me... I'm done. That's my last shift.
They weren't so scheduled back then to be tied down to shifts or to a particular establishment. Jesus, Sunday through Wednesday, 4:30 to close.
Somewhere along the line the job sort of got downgraded. Hey, could I get a martini, olives, please. The scholarly scholar's son got stuck behind a bar, less the doling out of miraculous wisdom, more the grunt work of trade, an employee, the boss's bottom line in mind, that's how it works. Even the strongest of unions will never bring that back, the job as it was in the original. And again, people, for all their claims of great mobility, are really more settled down than ever, stuck where they are, commuting in from the suburbs, bound to make anyone bitter and unimaginative, to say nothing of being needy and maybe even thirsty. Not like you're pulling up somewhere with your flock of sheep or your herd of swine. Too practical and humorless a world for that. Sheep and pigs come via the supermarket, as does whatever prophecy the world would allow these days, in form of The National Inquirer, or People, or laundry detergent.
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